


We Begin at the End

by lolcat202



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:18:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolcat202/pseuds/lolcat202
Summary: She can only curl up a little tighter next to him, tucking a leg between his own, rubbing her cheek against the steady warmth of the shoulders that have borne the weight of the human race for years now. Her shoulders aren’t strong enough anymore, but his are wide enough for the both of them.





	

_Dying is easy._

It’s not easy. It’s hard, and painful, and exhausting, no matter how many times she does it. It’s sleepless nights and shooting pains and hands shaking so hard she can barely pick up her glasses. It’s regrets and wishes and doubts. It’s never a peaceful journey on the deck of a boat that will bring her home, only a struggle to swim upstream against what could have been. What should have been. It’s asking herself, over and over again, what she could have, should have, done differently.

Dying is still easier than choosing to live, when living has been removed from the equation. Dying was easy when it was a simple matter of making sure that Bill survived Cain, even though she knew she would not. But he survived, and she survived, and Cain was nothing more than a fleeting memory. A series of bad days lost in a series of worse years. She survived, and Bill survived, thanks to Baltar’s cure and a rigged election.

Thanks to a fall from grace averted by the one person who believed that grace was still within her. Humanity survived, and didn’t, no thanks to Tory, no thanks to the ballot box, no thanks to the cold, barren soil. No thanks to her. The election should have destroyed her, but didn’t because Bill stood between her and the freefall into nothingness. And then he was gone, and New Caprica… New Caprica eroded the trust she’d tried so hard to build among the fleet. New Caprica eroded the trust that she’d built that living for the moment was better than dying for a purpose. But still, she believed in Bill. In Earth. In the vision of what was to be, in a new beginning for them all that came at the end of who they once were. In the dying leader, in the beginnings that seemed never to end. She would die, and die again, over and over until they found a new home on Earth. A battlestar falling from the sky. A rescue from New Caprica. A second chance to find Earth.

Earth is a carrot we dangle before the fleet. Earth is neither flesh nor bone; Earth is a promise whispered over the call of a red dress and a solid back and a night under the stars. Earth is the promise that what she sacrifices in its pursuit will be worth it in the end.

There are no words for what Earth did to them. No words for what Earth did to her. No answer but the brush of his hand against her back, the breath in her ear as he whispers to her during a funeral. No answer but the solid mass under her own skin and bones (breaking down more and more every day), pressing into her skin, holding her up even as her she begs her body to let her down.

It can’t be comfortable for him, ribs and hip bones and icy fingers curling into his side, wearing divots into his muscles, claiming his warmth for her own. It can’t be comfortable, and yet he pulls her closer, easing jagged edges into lines that have no end and no beginning. Bill, solid and firm. Bill, his body a harbor in the storm. Bill, tracing lines into her skin that go beyond maps, or coordinates, or prophecies. Bill, word and vow and promise made flesh.

I begin where you end. You’re the end of any beginning I’ll ever want.

Dying is easy. Let go of the pills, let go of the treatments, turn a blind eye to the faces of recrimination.

Living is hard, because Bill wants her to live, and she can’t. Even if she wanted to – she so wants to, more than she wanted to take her mother’s pain, more than she wanted to beg her father and sisters to stay that night in Caprica City, build a fire and roast s’mores and rehash a baby shower – even if she wanted to, she can’t fight history. She can’t fight the civil war waged in her breast, more deadly to the fleet than the war waged in her backyard so few years ago.

She can’t fight the building blocks of human anatomy. She can’t remake Saul or Tyrol or Anders into human, any more than she can remake her own blood into something less destructive. She can’t find a magical cure for the cancer that’s destroying her, bit by bit. She can only curl up a little tighter next to him, tucking a leg between his own, rubbing her cheek against the steady warmth of the shoulders that have borne the weight of the human race for years now. Her shoulders aren’t strong enough anymore, but his are wide enough for the both of them.

She hopes.

She believes.

She begins again, every day. For him.


End file.
